Keeping Rizzo in Tucson today will pay off for Padres tomorrow

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Though the Padres’ fast-track first baseman continues to pound Pacific Coast League pitching like an octopus playing Whack-a-Mole, the big leagues’ worst-hitting ballclub is letting him linger at Triple-A Tucson.

Rizzo is a victim of his own spectacular success (.369 batting average, 15 home runs and 59 runs batted in through Saturday) and of baseball’s byzantine collective bargaining agreement. He is one of those prospects whose promotion could cost his club millions of dollars if it means an extra year of salary arbitration. He is, as such, one of those phenoms being held back for the greater good.

What the Padres are doing with Rizzo is no different from what the Washington Nationals did with Stephen Strasburg, what the Florida Marlins did with Mike Stanton or what the Milwaukee Brewers did with Ryan Braun. They are dragging their feet for long-term financial reasons at the presumed cost of being more competitive right now.

Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but it’s the only sensible way to proceed.

Because 17 percent of those players with between two and three years of major league experience become eligible for an extra year of arbitration as seniority-based “Super 2s,” picking the point at which a player is called up can be a critical and costly calculation.

For Padres’ third baseman Chase Headley, the last Super 2 qualifier last year with two years and 123 days of service time, a few extra days on the roster made the difference between him being unilaterally renewed at about $450,000 and negotiating a contract worth $2.325 million.

A more extreme example is San Francisco pitcher Tim Lincecum, who made the Super 2 cutoff by seven days at the end of the 2009 season, a week that wound up costing the Giants more than $8 million between salary and signing bonus.

And that’s just the Year One impact. The Washington Post’s Dave Sheinin estimated that delaying Strasburg’s promotion until June 8 last year could eventually save the Nationals as much as $18 million.

Sure, it looks lousy when a last-place club declines to field its best possible lineup, but the short-term outlook can be shortsighted. Had the Padres delayed Headley’s promotion by just a few days in 2008, they might have saved enough money to keep Jerry Hairston Jr. for another year.

Every dollar spent carries an opportunity cost. Managing a major league budget means weighing today against tomorrow.

“There’s nothing illegal, immoral or fattening about it,” said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations. “You’re going to have an eligibility line (and) whatever the number is, there is going to be a huge economic incentive for clubs to manage around that number. It’s just inevitable …

“If a team has a problem at the position, that obviously is uncomfortable. (But) Given the economic constraints within which clubs have to do business, to say, ‘Gee, you shouldn’t be doing this because you’re not putting the best team on the field,’ that’s a pretty narrow view.”

Though individual players have clearly been hurt in the process, Manfred says the practice of delaying the arbitration clock “has been open and notorious enough that if the union didn’t realize this is a right that’s available to the clubs, we’d have a grievance.”

Though both sides have signaled that the “Super 2” situation will be revisited before baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement, the issue appears to lack high priority because of the relatively low number of affected players. Thus while Anthony Rizzo might become the next Adrian Gonzalez, he’s unlikely to be the next Curt Flood.

“Your knee-jerk reaction is they’re screwing the kid,” San Diego-based agent Barry Axelrod said. “But they (the Padres) are playing by the rules. No one seems to be terribly uncomfortable with it that I know of.

“It’s not an issue that’s crushing to anybody. It’s not an issue that anybody’s going to go out on strike over.”

It is more of an issue of perception than indignation, but the perception that the Padres are cutting competitive corners for financial gain is already pervasive and increasingly problematic. The Padres are so sensitive on this point that General Manager Jed Hoyer has consistently declined to directly address the arbitration clock as a factor in his personnel decisions.

Making the case that Rizzo needed more seasoning last month, Hoyer ticked off a list of legitimate developmental concerns, including the 21-year-old player’s lack of experience and his limited exposure to left-handed pitching.

But when a reporter broached the open secret of arbitration considerations, Hoyer replied, “Make sure you write that I had no facial expression when you said that.”

“We continue to send people in to watch Anthony and the entire Triple-A team,” Hoyer said Saturday. “The reports on him are very positive. We do want him to continue to get at-bats against lefties. I want him to continue to put pressure on us to bring him up and he’s doing that really well.”

Since the Super 2 cutoff is a floating target from year to year, there’s no precise method to determine when a prospect has moved past the season’s danger zone. Recent history, however, says most clubs think the arbitration clock coast becomes clear in late May and early June.

“It’s very frustrating if, in your mind, you’re being suppressed,” said agent John Boggs, who does not represent Rizzo. “I would tell him to stay strong, (that) it’s only a matter of time. If you continue to succeed, eventually you’re going to get where you need to be.”

Patience is hard when time is money, but Anthony Rizzo’s time should be soon.